Hank

I emerged from Thanksgiving weekend without losing any weight. I didn't wind up gaining weight, and I'll consider it a victory that I went through not one, but TWO delicious thanksgiving feasts and didn't put on any weight.

( boring exercise updates )

Watched it last night, and...

( cut for spoilers - those who haven't seen it yet, read no further unless you want spoilinesss )

Went to dinner at Shalimar on Tuesday night. Very good food, nice service, clean restaurant. foolbunny gave it a much more thorough review. On the whole, I definitely recommend it if you enjoy Indian food.
( Then we watched Religulous )
( Fitness and Diet Stuff )

I hung out with Joel for a bit last night, had some decent conversation, and then we went downstairs to hang out with Jax, Cindy, and Tory. Very interesting conversations ensued about our current financial predicament, religion, and government.

I am profoundly grateful to have friends who can carry on a spirited and intelligent discussion on a wide variety of topics. I was perhaps more vehement in my statements about religion than I should have been, as usual, but it's a subject I feel strongly about.

As of this morning I'm down 15 pounds from start weight. Diet continues to be pretty manageable, although I have recently been less disciplined about keeping my food diary, which is a slight cause for concern, and something I'll have to be better about.

Having two high-calorie days a week is nice, just in the sense that it allows me to do things like go out for a nice dinner with Krishna or have a treat without feeling bad about cheating on the diet.

Life continues apace. Most things are pretty good, other things drive me crazy. So it is.

Turned 31 this weekend.

Old!

About 20 people ambushed me on Friday night for my birthday, I had a nice time and it's good to know that my friends care about me.

( On the record for the future )

It was a very nice dinner, the food/appetizers at the Roadhouse Grill are great, and it's nice to know that people will go out of their way to ambush me for a birthday celebration.

Saturday was overall pretty mellow, and then on Sunday I went over to Kurt & Candace's anniversary barbecue. Food was delicious, good company, and I even mostly managed to stick to my diet.

Then I picked up Spore, which is interesting, in that it's like 5 fairly different games rolled into one. It was good enough that I wound up playing it for something like 8 hours straight. Not sure how long it will hold my interest, the "galactic empire" stage seems a bit tedious to me so far, and it seems like it will become more annoying as my empire grows.

Had [Heroic Instant Grits of the Champion] for breakfast this morning. I'd never eaten grits before yesterday. They're good. Fairly similar to Cream of Wheat, a bit of honey and some cinnamon and they make a delicious breakfast.

The diet in general is going well. I've been using FitDay to keep track of my diet, and it's pretty awesome for that. Thanks to missloo12 for the suggestion. I'm down a couple pounds from start weight, which is nice, but mostly I'm just feeling a lot better now that I'm paying attention to the elephant in the middle of the room.

Not too much to add to that. I'm going to try to be meticulous about diet updates and keeping my food journal in the hopes that it will make it easier to stick with.

I had couscous for dinner last night, and it was delicious. Krishna had made the suggestion of cooking it using chicken broth instead of water. She is brilliant.

One of the nice things about a calorie counting diet is that it does offer me much more flexibility in what I eat. After my recent lapse in the crazy cheater diet, I rediscovered my love of ramen. So good. In fact, I suspect ramen is the reason I decided to stay off of Atkins. I think my reasoning went something like "if I can't eat delicious delicious tasty ramen on this diet, it is for the birds. The carnivorous birds."

I wound up at about 300 calories over my target yesterday, thanks to two shots of vodka and a nectarine from the unexpected Farmer's trip, but overall, not bad. That still puts me at about 2000 calories under what I'm expected to be burning at my current weight.

Today is one of my 2250 calorie days. I've eaten basically the same things that I did yesterday, but I'll be having dinner with Krishna and those extra calories allow for a lot more flexibility in what I can eat.

I'm looking forward to the weekend, and hopefully after another mellow weekend my foot will be back to the point where I can walk to work again. I also need to start exercising again, so I will restart 5BX this weekend (minus running and jumping jacks until my foot heals).

I've also started taking 5-HTP to help combat some of my depression issues. It's difficult to judge if it's the 5-HTP, a general mood lift from feeling like I'm doing something to improve myself, or (most likely) some combination of the two, but I am in a better mood today than I've been in for some time. Huzzah for not feeling like crap, whatever the source!

I've been feeling out of control and self-destructive lately. A combination of depression, "fuck it", and a lack of direction. Same old story. I don't like it. Same old story there, too. Other stresses in my life right now as well, but sometimes you just have to soldier on and hope things get better.

The main problems in my life are of my own creation, or a result of my own inaction. The real question is, "what am I going to do about it?" And the answer, for the moment, is "I don't know." I know that I need to get my weight under control, exercise and diet will do that, but I've completely fallen off the wagon on those fronts and it feels very futile to me at the moment.

There have been times in my life where I felt like I could just bend the universe to my will, and by and large, was successful. Right now, that feels very far away and impossible for me. But I felt that way once, and I can reach that point again. For the time being, I think that I may just have to fake it, trick myself into believing that I can succeed, and if I can pull the wool over my own eyes long enough, I will find that I have succeeded in spite of myself.

"The way it works is, you do the thing you're scared shitless of, and you get the courage AFTER you do it, not before you do it."
"That's a dumbass way to work. It should be the other way around."
"I know. That's the way it works."

And that pretty much sums it up. It's a dumbass way to work, but that's the way it is. :P

Seriously.

What.
The.
Fuck.

Retroactive immunity for the telephone companies who illegally participated in warrantless wiretapping. And a blank check for further warrantless wiretapping until 2012.

It passed in the Senate 69-28 - not even close. How does this even happen? Don't you at least have to read the Constitution once before you're sworn into office? Words can scarcely convey my profound and bitter disappointment in the fucking clowns in our government.

*sigh*